The present invention relates to a local number solution for roaming mobile telephony users.
Along with everyone else, frequent travelers pay premium rates for using their mobile phones while roaming. For frequent travelers, however, the costs mount up rather more quickly than for everyone else. To reduce their costs, frequent travelers therefore often purchase local prepaid SIM cards and in this way they can be reached, at least by their local contacts, using local call costs. This reduces mobile terminated (MT) costs and removes the burden of international call expenses from local contacts. Such a solution is advantageous for the business traveler who has locally based business contacts.
This situation however causes travelers some inconvenience if they want to receive International and local calls at the same time. Either they must carry two SIM cards, one for local and one for international use. Alternatively the traveler must keep two mobile handsets, one for local and one for International use. If the traveler uses just one SIM card then she must replace the SIM in her mobile handset (if not SIM locked)—thus missing incoming calls on the inactive SIM.
Mobile phone users expect their roaming experience to match their mobile lifestyles, with easy access to both services and people anywhere, anytime. Yet, dialing and receiving calls in visited networks is usually carried out at premium rates.
The result is that roamers look for cheaper methods of using their handsets. Turning OFF the handset is one sure way to lower roaming expenses and rejecting incoming calls is another. Many roamers, traveling frequently to specific destinations, buy local prepaid cards for roaming in the visited country. However, when they replace the SIM in their handsets, they become unavailable on their home network MSISDN, These roamers tend to use two handsets, in order to enable both numbers concurrently.
It is further noted that roaming users are regarded as very valuable customers by cellular handset companies, frequent roamers all the more so, and the more it is possible to attract and retain roamers at any given network the better.
It is also noted that the tendency of a roamer to have a second, local number via a replacement SIM card represents loss of revenue to the originating network of the roamer, whose services are not being utilized as long as its own SIM card is removed.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a system for roaming users which is devoid of the above limitations.